Read my Extend topic, and you'll see that Extend is in itself a somewhat semantic utility. Backspace alone on Extend is meh; arrows/editing with Ctrl and Shift is nothing short of wonderful. Caps+S+T+N to select previous word for instance, then holding down Caps hit X to cut, then similarly move down a paragraph and paste at the end of the line (Caps+T+E,Caps+Y, Caps+V). And that's just one example. Have you read that topic?

I use Extend even in Vim, particularly to replace the jkhl keys that are somewhat out of place. But you'll find other tricks too. And, yes, the Caps+Q Esc.

note to self for future colemak installation

NB acess to a qwerty usb keyboard, keycaps in original locations is critical

0. Get dreymar_x-mod dir from Dropbox or Colemak Forum->Linux Big Bag thread:

https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=1438&p=1

1. Copy dreymar_x-mod dir to ~/Desktop
2. Open terminal
3. cd ~/Desktop/dreymar_x-mod
4. chmod u+x *.sh (NB important step, will fail otherwise)
5. sudo ./install-dreymar-xmod.sh -o
6. edit /etc/default/keyboard to look like this:

# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE

# Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.

# XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBMODEL="pc105awide-sl"
XKBLAYOUT="gb"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS="misc:extend,lv5:caps_switch_lock,grp:shifts_toggle,compose:menu"

BACKSPACE="guess"

6. reboot machine (NB this is important - will not work otherwise)
7. Select English(Colemak[Ed],Curl-Dbg/Hk ergo) from drobdown top-right or from settings-keyboard

hopefully all will be well by this point..

Ah, nice catch! :-D Actually, I never wrote that and you must've imagined it. Yep...

If I were you, I'd drop the chmod step and use 'sudo bash' <etc> instead!

But good points. I'll swipe your points and put them in my post. Could be nice with a simple point-by-point for a normal install. Thanks!

Ah, good call. I'll fix my install script to use bash explicitly. Although another solution is that you don't really have to use the -x switch to activate your layout as you'll be activating it manually later on (and the model through that default keyboard file) anyway.

Update 2016-06-16:

Several tweaks and tricks. Shell scripts improved, Curl and Tarmak-Curl improvements, Kyrillic phonetic layouts updated.

See the main Big Bag for XKB topic, and the Tarmak topic.

Since we can't make setxkbmap work from a local dir at the moment, system install is now kind of a default. Calling the install script without arguments to the contrary, now defaults to a system (X11 dir) install. The -o switch still works, but isn't necessary right now.

The scripts are colorful now! Now sure how that looks in a non-color terminal, but some writing should still be bold at least.

Hi @DreymaR,

long time without visiting here. I have updated my OS to Ubuntu 16.04, reinstalled your wonderful bag of tricks - I cannot live without them - but I have a weird issue.

My key AE12 does not work - at all! No equal key(!). The cursor just flickers but does not type anything.

It seems to be a problem with the mapping of the key. If I change language (e.g. to spanish) the equal sign does work in its new position, however, the same key does not work , should type !
Other combinations of the AE12 do work, so with shift + AE12 I get +, with altgr + AE12 I get × and with shift+altgr+AE12 I get ÷
So it is not the keyboard. I have a laptop with an external keyboard and both AE12 keys have the same problem, so it is not a hardware issue.
Do you know how can I debug this? I cannot program with a computer without equal sign... :-|
This is a plain install of ubuntu 16.04.

And about this:
> Something seems to break key repetition after a while in Ubuntu?!? Not sure it's my fault but...
How do you fix this?

Thanks a lot.

Hi DreymaR,

Thank you for your reply, I'll try to give you more details and explain myself better
- I use standard/default colemak US - AE12 is

key <AE12> { [     equal,       plus,      multiply,         division ] };

So the equal does not work.

- I use wide angle "pc105angle-lg", but I have tried leaving it at pc105 and 104, same result.
- You are right, in the spanish layout I have ¡/¿ - the ¡ does not work

Sorry. What I meant is that if I change layout (e.g. to Spanish standard) the equal sign is in the AE10, with shift. And there, it works, I get the equal sign.
But the AE12, that in spanish has the ¡ does not work.

Doesn't work either.

Maybe I should undo your patch and try again? What would be the command, if any?

About the key repetition, any idea how to get it back?

Thank you again for your help.

Ha!

fixed it! I couldn't find the event it was tied to, but I tried to assign = as a shortcut to another action. Then applied, and then unassigned it.

So I got my AE12 to work again! :)

OK, so I am back at work, but, still this key repetition problem. Any idea on why this stops working?

Thanks again and sorry for disturbing with the annoying AE12 isssue!

Best regards

Hi DreymaR,

I found that the interferring software was yakuake :( I use it everyday. As soon as I start it, no =. I close it, I get my = again.
Also, I am having issues with F8. This one got fixed assigning the shortcut to whatever and unassigning it again. But, I don't get it back in extended layer + 8.

There are some issues with this ubuntu, for sure. The most annoying one is, due to lack of key repetition, I don't really have alt+tab to switch tasks. I can only switch between two windows, but as the alt does not repeat, I can't get to the rest of the windows...

Does this happen on standard ubuntu, too? I use Kubuntu (with KDE), so maybe switching Destkop engines doesn't fix it, right?

Thanks, regards.

I also have a lack of autorepeat on Debian. I noticed that the keys without autorepeat are the ones with a modifier or RedirectKey on the Extend layer. So, I think X disables autorepeat for those keys, since it thinks it is unwanted.

Fortunately, with 'xset r keycode' you can re-enable autorepeat on a key. Then, the key with keycode 'keycode' will autorepeat, but only for the symbols where it makes sense. Since it will only enable autorepeat on symbols for which it makes sense, I don't see a problem with enabling it on all keys. That can be done with this small script:

#!/bin/sh
for keycode in $(seq 8 255)
do
  xset r "$keycode"
done

Or, as one-liner:

seq -s " r " 8 255 | xargs xset r

Also, for switching between more than two windows, do you need autorepeat? Don't you need to hit Tab multiple times while holding down the Alt key? I don't want autorepeat on the Alt key for that...

I fully agree. The autorepeat behavior should be configurable in a compat file. But when I tried, it didn't seem to work...